Yacht Crew Insurance, Disability, Retirement and more

Back in the day when I worked full time on several under 100' yachts things were different (prior to 2004). Most of these boats were owned by the owners normal business and were the businesses corporate boat for entertaining. We used to get paid by the owners normal business and all benefits all of the other employees got, we got. Healthcare, 401k, etc. This no longer is the case, I think due to IRS scrutiny and laws. Now the sub 100' boats are owned by their own corporation or entity and benefits are at the whim of the owner.

The other big deal, is healthcare USED to be affordable even if you simply bought it on your own.....$100-200 a month for an individual, with a good deductible ($500-2000) and good coverage. So even if the boat didn't offer it, you made enough money and it was cheap enough to just pay for it. The affordable care act REALLY made health insurance UN-affordable. Now policies have a huge deductible $5000-10000 and it's now $400-700 for crappy coverage with that huge deductible, and an individual. Family plans are even more ridiculous. And, yes a lot of that premium goes to cover people with huge existing issues, and no coverage at all who uses the ER like a free doctors office. The lawsuits are another issue. The affordable care act, didn't fix any existing issues with the health care marketplace, it created huge new ones and it's really a mess. Even group healthcare for companies, the premiums have doubled or even tripled and so has the size of the deductible. It's a mess all of the way around.

Excellent topic and a great thread.

So, as an outsider looking in, this new Health Care Act only pushes the US back to the 1930's not the full 1800's the GOP wanted?

Get a grip America, universal health care, yes even poor people get sick sometimes but millions still pay into the system, that's how insurance works.

Is this too difficult to understand?

Discuss-ed

I think you are mis-informed. The problem is not nearly enough people are paying into the system. It is called a "free ride" for too many folks and overwhelms the system.

The quality of care with universal healthcare is generally poor compared to our quality of health care. Huge wait times are a big issue, along with a lot of necessary operations being not approved. It's also more costly because nothing a government does is ever done with any efficiency. Look at our VA healthcare system, the fraud and abuse and wait times some of our Veterans are enduring is criminal at best. Our system needed some tweaks in regards to frivoulous lawsuits and free health care for illegal immigrants that everyone else had to eat the costs of. What we got was a huge disaster that never addressed the origional issues and carried another myriad of expenses.

Overly expensive and unattainable coverage do nothing to promote any small business in its ability to extend such benefits to employees, associations have the ability here in the PNW to act as a quasi employer for the ability to get coverage for really small groups, maybe the Yachting Industry needs to take a lead in this area ?

Aside from the thread drifting. The problem is the sheer cost of health insurance. Back in the day, it was a breeze (price wise) for yacht owners to simply extend it to their crew, so more of them did it. Also more of the boats were owned by the owners normal corporation so their business benefits extended to the crew, now I see that's getting a bit fewer and further between on the smaller crewed yachts.

Unfortunately, your summary is quite correct, but it may be that the responses illustrate why there is no unified or accessible health care in the yachting sector. Mistrust, misinformation, and misunderstanding. And, the healthy young having no immediate need of medical care or retirement.
Thank you, olderboater, for trying and caring. Without efforts like yours, the wheel would still be square.

On the West Coast, it was much like you describe in that the boat owner's business extended the salaries and benefits to "off site personnel". In those days, the majority of the sportfishers and yachts that wintered in Mexico were owned by fairly large contractors in the building industry. Besides the housing crash turning against those people, many found out the hard way that deducting boat expenses from their taxes was a short lived dream that the IRS frowned upon. I think those two things changed the picture of the yachting sector on the West Coast, in terms of salaries and benefits.

If you do not use the boat for business then the IRS will come down hard on you- as expected. In my last full time job I was an employee of the vessel owner (which was a business); part of my employment package was a 401K, health insurance, paid time off, and a salary. Greater than 90% all of the vessel trips involved employees, vendors, suppliers or other business interests.
My current health insurance is provided by my wife's employer- the county school district. She is a teacher (which is a common feature of boat captains- their spouses are teachers) and all I need to do in order to be successful is for her to get a second job

The IRS isn't doing as well at policing these deductions as they once were able. It used to be that if an IRS auditor was looking into your books, that his efforts paid his salary. The chances of being audited are quite slim, these days. That's a bit of luck for the employees that were treated to boat rides, since that also counts as compensation and should be reported on a 1099 form.
But now I'm REALLY far afield of OB the OP's original thread! Sorry

While some want to speak of the overall health care, the subject of health care for "yacht" (or any other crew not "commercial") crew is important and on topic for this forum.

Well, the other thing is the boat's normal insurance does have crew coverage which does cover hospital care for accidents and injuries that happen to the crew on board. So, considering that a lot of crew are under 35 years old, a lot of them didn't see health care as an important benefit. However, that changed with the Obamacare where now they're getting a hefty tax every April, if they don't have health insurance. So it now is becoming an issue again in younger crews minds.

Listen with these guys; https://www.pya.org/About-PYA/About-the-PYA.aspx

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness......too many mollycuddlers in the world today people losing independence thought, I believe some Universities even ban such things.